By Anne C. Heymen
Photos by Mark Cubbedge / Archival Photos Contributed
He’s got a rough exterior, but he’s really a big teddy bear.
That’s how friends, co-workers, and former students describe Coach Wendell McCraw, a seasoned basketball and football coach, who spent some 40 years in the field of education.
“His exterior was a front,” claims Purcell Hall, who served as head basketball coach at St. Augustine High School for 30 years. “He was mean on the outside, making you feel he was non-caring, but that was just a front. He really cared about the kids at St. Augustine High School and about St. Augustine High School in general. He did a lot of nice things that he would tell you not to tell anybody he did.”
Former student Mark Cubbedge can attest to McCraw’s “mean” front. “The first time I met him, I was 10 years old at Orange Street School,” Cubbedge recalls. “He’s a big man,” Cubbedge says of McCraw, “and I can remember him looking like a giant. He was intimidating.” As the PE coach, Cubbedge relates, McCraw had the kids line up with the numbers on the court to do jumping jacks. “Boy, I didn’t want him to call me out for getting off that number!” Cubbedge says.
“I taught PE at Orange Street School for 12 years, and I went to the high school after that,” McCraw explains.
Born in Laurel, Mississippi, McCraw grew up on a farm about three or four miles out of town. He followed an extremely winding road to get to St. Augustine. After serving in the U.S. Army and graduating from Louisiana Baptist College, McCraw says his “first real job” was serving as a head basketball coach and assistant football coach at a school in Louisiana. “I’ll tell you something. I never stayed anywhere over two years.” So, his path took him to locations in Georgia, Mississippi, and eventually Seminole County, Florida. A friend was coaching in Live Oak and “tried to get me to come over there, but I was a single guy and liked night life,” says McCraw, who turns 78 in November. While at a high school coach’s gathering in Gainesville, he saw information on a bulletin board that St. Augustine was looking for a coach. The fact that someone said, “they ain’t won but one game in four years” was just what McCraw wanted to hear. His service at St. Augustine High School initially included the positions of defensive coordinator in football and assistant basketball coach. He was named head coach in 1981, holding that post for five years. “We had one good season,” he recalls, “with a record of 7 and 3.”
Leaving coaching and football, McCraw became the school’s athletic director in 1986.
“He will always be ‘Coach’ to me,” Tim Forson, superintendent of schools for St. Johns County, wrote in an email. “Coach has been a mentor of mine since I first began teaching and coaching. Since the loss of my father during my second year of teaching, Coach has continued to provide advice and counsel to me on many occasions… probably more times than he wanted!”
Citing the “numerous lessons” he learned from McCraw, Forson suggests, “I know more about Mississippi history than I could ever have learned in a college course.”
“Make no mistake,” Forson stresses, “Coach never hesitated to say what he felt needed to be said. He definitely has the ability to intimidate. However, I do know his words and decisions were always for the purpose of doing what was best for the kids.”
Forson listed two distinct traits he has tried to learn from McCraw: work ethic and loyalty.
One of the greatest memories Dr. Joseph Joyner, former superintendent of schools for St. Johns County and now president at Flagler College, has of McCraw was “standing next to Wendell” and watching the Yellow Jackets play football. “The thing I appreciated about him,” Joyner continues, is “you’d ask a question, and you’d get a straight answer based on his heart.”
One of the best answers he got from McCraw occurred when a high-level employee was retiring, leaving a big gap in administration at the district level. “I was considering a replacement for the associate superintendent position, and I remember talking to Wendell, telling him I was considering a very young principal whose name was Tim Forson. I asked Wendell if he knew anything about the man, and about an hour and a half later, I knew I’d made the right choice!”
McCraw, says Joyner, was always focused on students, first, and “on people, really.”
EQUAL FOOTING
Joey Wiles, who was named football coach at SAHS in 1996, served the school for 20 years. As to his relationship with McCraw, “I will tell you this,” says Wiles. “Every sport at the high school was on equal footing when it came to Coach McCraw. It was as important for that girl in tennis to have what she needed as it was for the football player. He made sure all sports were on equal footing.”
“I didn’t look at them as males and females,” says McCraw, and, as athletic director, he made sure that the school policy reflected his own views.
The SAHS Sports Club, McCraw recalls, would buy lettermen jackets for the football team and other sports got just a sweater with a letter. “I told them that was it. That girl that’s playing sports…it is just as important to her as it is to the male athelete. What we do for one, we do for all.”
As athletic director, McCraw had a full schedule. “I didn’t teach any classes then. I did all the fields, all the grass-cutting, fertilizing, watering.”
Wiles recalls on one occasion when the sod on a golf course was being changed, McCraw “literally went and got the sod for St. Augustine High School.”
McCraw and wife, Jackie, have been married since 1975. He is father to two step-children, Chuck Young and Marilyn Tatum, both of whom, he says with a note of pride in his voice, are very successful.
McCraw is a member of Elks Lodge No. 829 and the Men’s Golf Association at the St. Johns County Golf Course. He doesn’t play golf anymore, he says, but likes to keep in touch with the organization.
SPECIAL RECOGNITION
McCraw’s honors include the Hall of Fame for the State Coaches Association and the Hall of Fame of the local sports club.
In addition, he is one of three coaches honored by the St. Augustine/ Ketterlinus High School Alumni Association. The field at H.L. “Foots” Brumley Stadium is named Joey Wiles/Walt Slater Field, in honor of the former coaches, and the athletic complex was renamed The Wendell McCraw Athletic Complex.
“Well, I’ll tell you what. I wasn’t as hung up on winning ballgames as I was hoping that the students, whether playing sports or not playing sports, were better individuals after four years,” says McCraw. “I was most proud of that.”
“I’ll tell you something else about me. I was in education for 40 years, and I don’t ever remember one day that I dreaded going to work. I loved what I did!”
Interviewing and relaying personalities via the written word is what Anne Heymen loves most.
